Once Brits abroad couldn't speak foreign languages – now no one lets us try

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I grew up, like most Brits, as an unwitting monoglot. Back then, in the 1980s, speaking only English was not considered odd. Hollywood and the Disney Channel, Enid Blyton and the Beano: all were accessible in our mother tongue. So why go to the trouble of learning a foreign language?

One answer, of course, is travel. But this was 30 years ago, the early Schengen days of travellers cheques (Gen Y, ask your parents) and Allo Allo (ditto). Foreign holidays – for myfamily, at least – meant a rain-soaked week in Brittany. A lesson from these forays across the Channel (other than the rotten weather) was the woeful inadequacy of school-boy language learning. Great for vocab tests; utterly hopeless sur...

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